Growing Up with Juvenile Arthritis

July is Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Month in the US and my first contribution is the story of being a kid with JA:

"It started when I was four years old. That deep in the bone pain gnawing at my right wrist, making it difficult to use my hand. The mysterious swelling that appeared out of the blue and disappeared again just as suddenly. And the doctors who didn't believe, so many of them. Except because I was four - and five and six and more - it was my mother whom they accused of making it all up. One even suggested she see a psychiatrist. And then, when I was nine, a doctor took one look at me and told me I had Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, just like that."